“We have been asking the government to debar criminals from contesting election. People send us hate mails saying how can the Election Commission (EC) allow such candidates to contest? But this is not in our hands. The law has to do that. Our proposal to debar criminal from contesting elections is pending with government since 1998,” said Dr SY Quraishi, India’s Chief Election Commission (CEC). He was speaking at a seminar titled “Democracy at Crossroads—Need for Electoral Reforms” organised by Moneylife Foundation and V Citizens Action Network (VCAN).

He said that, “A few years back we had a meeting with the law ministry on this issue. But they all disagreed with us. This is because they all have a quota of candidates with criminal backgrounds.” The political parties argue that law of the land is—one is innocent until he is proven guilty—and so you cannot debar anybody from contesting elections just because they have a charge against them. But Dr Quraishi has an interesting argument against it. “My argument is that India has around 2.68 lakh under-trials out of the total 4 lakh prisoners. This is means they are still not proved guilty. But four of their fundamental rights—liberty, right to occupation, freedom of movement and dignity—are taken away from them despite the fact that they have not been proven guilty. If fundamental rights can be taken away from those who have been charged but not proven guilty, why cannot the same apply to politicians, especially since the right to contest elections of an alleged criminal is not even a fundamental right?”

According to EC, politicians argue that there are often false complaints filed to defame them. “To this we have certain safeguards. Firstly, we don’t look into cases of petty crimes like abusing or slapping someone, etc, but only that of heinous crimes like rape, dacoity, murder, etc. Secondly, such cases had to be filed six months before the election. It can’t be just before the day of election. Lastly, charges must have been framed charges against those candidates by the court of law. This is a bigger safeguard.”

He also highlighted that in such cases politicians argue that there is no judicial application of mind. “But I challenge this argument. As we know such cases are tried only in the district courts and then goes to high court, if appealed. If the district court, which is independent, has framed charges, it definitely has some weightage. So there is judicial application of mind even if it is prima facie at that stage. I have spoken to few judges and they agreed to it. They (judges) also say that at such a stage the case can be thrown out and many of the cases come to appeal at the HC. So it is very much legal.”

Dr Quraishi said that despite no power to debar candidates with criminal backgrounds, they are closely watched. “We always have innovative measures for such candidates. One of them is that we keep a video watch on them 24x7. And if they are caught doing anything wrong, we take strict action and can also debar them from contesting elections.”

He adds, “We have other preventive measures. Like during elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) 27,000 people were held as preventive arrest, 17 lakh people of bad character were identified and were asked to sign a bond for good behaviour during elections and orders were given to act on the pending non-bailable warrants for many years, as these might be the possible criminals to be used for disrupting election process.